CESC

1. The Importance,
Definition, and
Elements of a
Community and
the Approaches in
the study of it

2. The importance of understanding
a community and its gains
– Community situations vary
– Each community has its own context and realities
– Those interested in working with a community must first have a clear
picture and a good grasp of the entity they are trying to address
– It is in appreciating the features and elements of a community that
engagement processes and actions become relevant, acceptable, and
appropriate
– Without a deep and wide knowledge of a target community, interventions
may emerge as exclusive, inappropriate, or totally insensitive to the
members of the community

3. Gains from Understanding Community
Dynamics
– 1. Provides benchmarking data
– 2. Provides preliminary project planning information
– 3. Provides an idea of the community’s strengths and challenges
– 4. Provides an opportunity to understand the community’s dominant
rules and norms
– 5. Provides an occasion to gauge the attitude and behavior of the
community
– 6. Provides a way for a more directed and well informed dialogue with
the community
– 7. makes networking and partnership building more favorable
– 8. gets project implementation less complicated

4. 1. Provides Benchmarking Data
– Before the undertaking of any community action or development
intervention like a community project, it is important to establish
benchmark data.
– The data illustrate the preliminary picture or image of the
community.
– It serves as the initial community situationer or briefer.

5. 2. Provides preliminary project
planning information
– It is necessary to secure community information and feedback
needed for the conceptualization of a project design or plan.
– Understanding community dynamics is a key to a sound and
relevant community development plan.
– A community development action plan includes strategies and
actions meant to enhance the quality of life in a community.

6. 3. Provides an idea of the
community’s strengths and
challenges
– An in-depth understanding of the community’s strengths and challenges
guides the community-based project development team to identify the
strengths and possible loopholes of the project design.
– It will make the design more feasible and realistic.
– The project development team involves the key stakeholders in the
community, such as the community leaders and the representatives of
the people who will be directly or indirectly affected by the project
implementation, as well as external members like community
development agency representatives and external consultants.

7. 4. Provides an opportunity to
understand the community’s
dominant rules and norms
– The success or failure of a community project more often than not
is strongly affected by the prevailing rules and norms in the
community.
– The intensity or degree of reactions or sensitivities of the
community members is affected by those rules and norms.
– A successful community development project requires a
consideration of those rules and norms.

8. 5. Provides an occasion to gauge the
attitude and behavior of the
community
– An understanding of the community members’ attitude and
behavior will give the project development team an idea whether
the project will be supported or rejected or whether it can be
negotiated with the people.

9. 6. Provides a way for a more
directed and well informed
dialogue with the community
– If one is an outsider in a target community for project
development, a crucial activity one should undertake is dialogue
with the community.
– The quality of the dialogue depends on how well-informed or how
knowledgeable the outsiders are on the community situation and
issues.
– Project development is a process of creating or innovating ideas,
interventions, and technologies that would respond to a particular
need or problem in the community.

10. 7. Makes networking and partnership
building more favorable
– By having an idea of the different advocacy and interest groups in
the community , it is easier for people from schools, institutions,
or groups to partner with local networks or associations.

11. 8. Gets project implementation
less complicated
– Without a good grasp of the community they are aimed at, project
development and implementation become complicated and
stressful.
– The project implementation plan includes the steps and processes
that must be taken into consideration.
– An understanding of the community will tell the project
development and implementation team what to do or what to be
more concerned of.

12. – There are many ways to understand and appreciate a community
but there is no substitute to immersing and living with the
community.
– Social development workers, social workers, social action people,
and community organizers cannot escape what we call in Tagalog
as “paglubog” or “pagbabad.”
– It is more than exposure; it means immersion.
– It is a process of living with the people in order to feel, smell, and
think like them.

13. – The practice of having immersion is captured by the thinking of the
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (700 BCE) when he said:
“Go to the people. Live with them, learn from them,
love them. Start with what they know; build with what they
have.”

14. The Definition of a Community
– Communities are generally defined by their common cultural
heritage, language, beliefs, and shared interests.
– They may be classified as SMALL, such as the small place-based
community of a barangay or coastal village
– Or LARGE such as a region, state, or nation

15. Murphy and Cunningham(2003)
on SMALL communities
– Small communities have “defined territories and are given life by
three interacting people processes:
– A. an underlying web of human relationships called as social fabric,
– B. a unique community power structure, and
– C. a set of resource flows that constitute a local community.
– Small communities are powerful producers of relationships which
include kinship, friendship, neighbors, local institutions, and
communication mechanisms that connect people to people

16. – Communities are viewed from the traditional and alternative perspectives.
– The traditional perspectives relate communities with geographical
location, work, and the social system.
– The alternative viewpoint is more subjective, integrative, and feminist and
addresses oppression and discrimination.
– It integrates the notion of social justice, human diversity, values, and ethics
– It applies the idea of community building, community renewal, community
assets and strengths, ethnic and civil society, and social capital.
– A wholistic view recognizes the interconnectivity of people and place-
based strategies and acknowledges that economic, environmental, and
social issues are interdependent

17. The Elements of a community:
Nature and Power Structure
– The dynamics of a community are determined by its nature and
structure and how it reacts with external or internal forces.
– It is thus important to recognize the characteristics and features of
a community to understand why it acts and reacts in a certain way.

18. The Nature of a Community
– 1. A community is a sociological construct.
– 2. A community has fuzzy boundaries.
– 3. A community can exist within a larger community.
– 4. A community may move.

19. 1. A Community is a Sociological
Construct
– The concept of a community is not only a “construct” (model);
– It is a sociological construct or a set of interactions or human behaviors
that have meaning and expectations between its members.
– There is not just action, but actions based on shared expectations,
values, beliefs, and meanings between individuals.
– In understanding how a community operates and how it changes, it is
necessary to learn a little bit about sociology, the science.
– The mobilizer is an applied scientist, a social scientist.
– While a pure scientist is interested in how things work, the applied
scientist is interested in taking that knowledge and getting useful results.

20. 2. A Community has Fuzzy
Boundaries
– When a community is a little village separated by a few kilometers from
other villages in a rural area, its boundaries appear at first to be very simple.
– The human interaction present may be seen as consisting only of relations
among the residents living inside that village.
– If the residents interact with people outside the village, they may, for
example, marry persons from other places and move or bring a spouse in to
live with them.
– At any given time, those village residents may have sisters, brothers,
cousins, parents, and relatives living elsewhere.
– The boundary of the community is no longer that precise.

21. 3. A Community can Exist within
a Larger Society
– There may be communities within larger communities, including
districts, regions, ethnic groups, nations, and other boundaries.
– There may be marriages and other interactions that link the
villages of a nation together.

22. 4. A Community may Move
– When technology is not based on local horticulture, the
community residents may be physically mobile.
– They may be nomadic herders walking long distances with their
cattle.
– They may be mobile fishing groups who move from time to time to
where the fish are available.
– They may be hunters who move to follow the game.

23. Bartle (2010)
– A Community can be considered like an organism because it can
function even if people come and go.
– It transcends the individual persons that make it up.
– A living organism also behaves similarly as it transcends its atoms.
– In addition an atom deals with a different set of forces than the
living plant or animal in which the atom is found.
– In the same way, an individual person faces a different set of forces
from those faced by the community where the individual lives.

24. – Bartle further pointed out that “a community is a super-organic
organism or system” made up of the thoughts, outlook, and
conduct of individual human beings full of divisions and conflicts
brought about by differences in religion, ethnicity, gender, access
to resources, class, educational level, income level, ownership of
properties, language, personality, opportunities, etc.

25. – The reality indicates that to work in a community or to undertake
community interventions is a challenging task.
– One must get to know first and foremost the community system.
– How does the community work?
– What are the structures and the different dimensions of the
community?
– One must observe how the community acts and reacts to forces that
are external and internal to its system.
– Development work requires understanding community dynamics and
processes.

26. THE STRUCTURE OF A
COMMUNITY
– IN A COMMUNITY, CHANGE AGENTS PUT PREMIUM IN UNDERSTANDING
POWER STRUCTURE.
– COMMUNITY POWER STRUCTURE IS ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF POWER
AT THE LOCAL COMMUNITY LEVEL
– BUT WHAT IS POWER ?
– POWER IN A COMMUNITY IS THE CAPACITY TO INFLUENCE THE DECISION-
MAKING AND DISTRIBUTION PROCESSES, TO BRING ABOUT CHANGE AND
GET THINGS DONE.
– THE IDEA OF POWER INCLUDES DETERMINING THE STRUCTURES THAT
HAVE IMPACT ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND ALSO THE LINKAGES THAT
FORM COLLABORATIVE WORKS

27. BASES OF LOCAL COMMUNITY
POWER
– 1. Connections – the capacity to create linkages and develop helpful
relationships with powerful individuals, family, and organizations.
– 2. Power in number – the base, back-up, and support of the people in the
community.
– 3. Rewards – the ability to provide awards, promotion, money, and gifts that
are useful to meet individual or organizational goals
– 4. Personal traits/Expertise – the capacity to foster respect and loyalty based
on charm, talents, and skills
– 5. Legitimate power – the leadership title or higher organizational or
institutional position.
– 6. Information – the ability to keep or share information
– 7. Coercion – influence through manipulation and coercion

28. – For community social change to happen, it is necessary to
understand the power actors
– Power actors have power mainly because of their influence
– The forms of power present, however, vary from one community
to the other
– Community organizers and development workers pay close
attention to power actors and the key people in the community
power structure because of their significant roles in social change.
– Their behavior or reaction can break or make community
development interventions.

29. Dimensions of a Community
– A community is a complex system with different dimensions
– These dimensions may be present in all communities, but they
may vary in size, degree, and complexity.
– This characteristic of a community may be attributed to the
combination of the communities’ human resource, natural
resource, culture, structure and other factors.
– Bartle (2010) identified six community dimensions

30. Dimensions of a Community as
identified by Bartle (2010)
– Technological
– Economic
– Political
– Institutional
– Aesthetic-value
– Belief-conceptual

31. Technological
– It is the community capital – its tools, skills and ways of dealing
with the physical environment.
– It is the interface between humanity and nature.
– This dimension is not comprised of the physical tools themselves
but of the learned ideas and behavior that allows humans to
invent, use, and teach others about these tools.
– Technology is as much a cultural dimension as beliefs and patterns
of interaction are.
– It is symbolic.

32. Economic
– It is the community’s various ways and means of production and
allocation of scarce and useful goods and services through barter,
market trade, state allocation, and others.
– This dimension is not about physical items like cash but about the
ideas and behavior that give value to cash and other items.

33. Political
– The various ways and means of allocating power, influence, and
decision making.
– It is not the same as ideology, which belongs to the values
dimension.
– It includes, but not limited to, types of governments and
management systems.
– It also includes how people in small bands or informal groups make
decisions when they do not have a recognized leader.

34. Institutional
– These are the ways people act , react, and interact with each
other, as well as the ways they expect each other to act and
interact.
– It includes institutions like marriage or friendship; roles like
mother or a police officer; status or class; and other patterns of
human behavior.
– This dimension looks at patterns of relationships that are
sometimes identified as roles and status, and the formation of
groups and institutions that derive from those patterns.

35. Aesthetic - Values
– This refers to the structure of ideas – sometimes paradoxical, inconsistent, or
contradictory – that people have about what is good and bad, beautiful and
ugly, and right and wrong.
– This is what they use to explain or justify their actions.
– The three axes are not acquired through our genes but through our
socialization.
– That implies that they can be relearned , that we could change our judgements.
– Values, however , are incredibly difficult to change in a community.
– They do change as community standards evolve, but that change cannot be
rushed or guided through outside influence or conscious manipulation.
– Shared community standards are important in community and personal
identity.

36. Beliefs-Conceptual
– This is another structure of ideas, also sometimes contradictory, that people have
about the nature of the universe, the world around them, their role in it, and the
nature of time, matter, and behavior.
– This dimension is sometimes thought to be the religion of the people.
– It is however a wider category, and it includes atheistic beliefs, such as how man
created God in his own image.
– Also it includes shared beliefs in how this universe came to be , how it operates,
and what reality is.
– It is religion and more.
– It is necessary to study and be aware of what the prevailing beliefs are in the
community. For you to be an effective catalyst of social change , your actions must
not offend those prevailing beliefs.
– They must be consistent with, or at least appropriate to, existing beliefs and
concepts of how the universe works.

37. – Understanding the different dimensions of a community is a
prerequisite to the process of community mapping and analysis. It is
only when you have a full grasp of the economic, political, social,
cultural, ecological, and physical dimensions of the community that
you may be able to build the community puzzle.
– There is a need to detect the key or combinations of keys to put
together the different parts of the puzzle successfully in order to see
the whole picture of the social issues affecting the community.
– It is thus important to develop not just the skill of assessing or
analyzing observable data, but also the skill of sensing or intuiting
because there are things that the people do not show or say.
– That is the value of the so-called paglubog or community immersion.